By making it impossible to quote him directly, he was able to satisfy both of Morris’s contradictory desires—he would always come across as interesting (in that the reporter would be forced to essentially fictionalize a narrative from a conversation that was almost impossible to reference), but he’d still be presented in the way he wanted to be seen (which is to say, enigmatically).

Rare is the American child who finishes school without at least once being asked to write a story based on one of the eerie, enigmatically captioned illustrations from Chris Van Allsburg's 1984 picture book, "The Mysteries of Harris Burdick."